Курсовая работа: Intercultural communication of Russian and English languages

Indeed words of English origin are those which refer to the Old English period. The other portion is foreign words which came from Latin, Greek, French, Scandinavian and other languages. There are two ways of new words penetration. The first is spoken language, that is, owing to the vivid communication of two nations using different languages the adoption of new words denoting material items or cultural notions appears. In this way new words assimilates completely faster. The second way is literary or written, that is, borrowing of new words from foreign texts during the translation of them into Target language. In this way new nominations preserve their phonetic, grammatical and orthographic features for a long time.

English language was formed by two major layers of English lexis: Anglo-Saxon and Romanic. Romanic layer in its turn can be divided into Latin and French. Moreover there are a lot of words which were borrowed from about 50 languages of the world, including Russian during the period of 1500 years.

Upon the whole such easiness of the new words adoption lays within the fact that England is an island and its geographical position was always the main reason for the attempts to conquer it by many other communities.

2.2 Classification of borrowings

Borrowings which are included in the vocabulary of a language can be classified into three groups:

1) according to the source of borrowings[10] ;

2) according to the aspect which was borrowed;

3) according to the level of assimilation.

According to the aspect that was borrowed, loan-words are divided into: phonetic and transcription, when the sound structure is rendered to be completely new, so this is when the sound structure remains unchanged in the borrowed word it only acquires some phonetic peculiarities of the Target language; calque-translations (the blue-print translation of the notion); semantic loan-words and the borrowing of wordbuilding elements.

Under the semantic borrowing we should understand the adoption of new nomination; it is often a figurative meaning to the already existing notion. The words “pioneer” and “brigade” have already existed in English word-stock before the penetration of sovetisms into it, but the definitions “” and “” they acquired under the influence of Russian language of Post October period.

As to the Russian language, in Before October period the words were borrowed mainly referring with the peculiarities of Russian nature, life and objects of trade: sable “соболь”, astrakhan “каракуль”, starlet “стерлядь”, steppe “степь”, verst “верста”, izba “изба”. There are a lot of sovetisms in English. Among them there are phonetic borrowings, where new notion and new sound structure are borrowed together: soviet, sputnik, bolshevik, kolkhoz, activist. After having made the analysis of new word definition with the original language one it turned out that it preserves just a part of definitions, often one of them and besides not the primary, but derivational one and it is quite often becomes a term (for example: sputnik and soviet.)

Calque-making - is the process of borrowing new words within adopting its associative meaning and the structure of the word or word combination 9for example: house of rest – “домотдыха”, five-year-plan – “пятилетнийплан, пятилетка”). During the process of calque the words or word combinations are translated separately and then combined together according to the foreign pattern of the word or word combination. According to the structure of the Target language calques can be divided into three groups:

1) word-formative calques – the morphological structure is reproduced;

2) phraseological – the process of blue-print translation of each word;

3) semantic – to attach figurative meaning to the already existed word according to the foreign pattern.

So that the process of calque-making realizes a very important function, being the guide of intercultural influence between languages. Word-formative calques can be inexact: during the translation one of the morphemes can be interpreted with the help of approximate equivalent.

Calque-making and transcription as the means of borrowing should be distinguished from the of the same name methods of translation. They do not differ by the mechanism but they do by the final result: the enlargement of vocabulary doesn’t take place during the process of translation, whereas during the process of borrowing new lexical units appears in the language.

2.3 Periods of Russian words’ penetration into English language

Most of research workers divide Russian influence on the English lexical system into two periods:

1) borrowings of the pre-revolutionary period;

2) borrowings of Soviet period.

However, V.V.Akulenko in his Ph.D. thesis (candidate's dissertation) divided the history of Russian language interaction with other Occidental languages, including English, into four periods.

The first period covers the influence of Old Russian language of the Kiev Russia on the Old and partially Middle English languages.

The second period is closely connected with the development of trade and political communication of Russia and England, the upgrowth of Russian nation’s power; it begins from the second half of XVI century and continues up to the middle of XIX century.

The third period begins from the 60 years of XIX century and lasts till 1917. Here the modifications in economical and social spheres are in the focus of interest, the increasing power of revolution struggled with the reaction and a great progress in the development of native science and culture.

The fourth period of Russian influence is the Soviet epoch. One could say about a new stage in the development of political and social-economic vocabulary of Russian language and also about the further development of its international significance in the post-war period connected with the beginnings of powerful camp of peace, democracy and socialism as far as the creation of UNO (United Nations Organization), where Russian language was declared as the international language along with English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Today we can speak about the fifth Post-Soviet period.

2.3.1 The first period

The mutual attention between English, French and Russian nations may be observed from ancient times. The Kiev state had extremely wide connections with different nations of Asia and Europe, including ancient Englishmen. As far back as in the XI century Novgorod was well-known by English people first of all as the supplier of furs and jewelry. The marriage of Vladimir Monomakh with the daughter of the English king Gerald had taken has taken place by this time. The cultural level of Kiev Russia was so high that occidental people thought it to be a rival to the Constantinople. Undoubtedly, the importance of Russian language must have been very considerable with such position of Russian state. Especially with the regard of the fact that Russian nation have already made a significant progress in its economical, political social and cultural spheres by this time. However, the process of borrowing new words by English language were not so large in number and the interpenetration of languages in this period did not occur, though it presents itself very probable that Russian language was able to make some influence on the vocabulary of English language.